APB: Finally, I Can Be A PUNK!

[Mrbloodworth]

Social max is 200+. However that area lacks most network and interaction overhead. Still, impressive to break the rendering/network limit + Custom textures.

[Samprimary]

I just want to say, I've massively enjoyed seeing Lum's article on APB on the front page of reddit for a day and a half.

People just open it up, go A HUNDRED MILLION? GAWP and boggle.

[UnSub]

Ex-RTW devs not going to get paid last set of wages, benefits.

When you burn $100m, you really need to make sure you reduce it to ash.

[sam, an eggplant]

I like his posts from back in 2008, when he talks about how wonderful RTW is, how they're scaling up properly, finding the right work/life balance, and so on. Lots of self-congratulation. He's so bright-eyed and full of energy, like a cute little puppy chasing its tail in circles.

[taolurker]

Ex-RTW devs not going to get paid last set of wages, benefits.

When you burn $100m, you really need to make sure you reduce it to ash.

Did anyone else who read this keep expecting to see Dmart someplace in there?

[IainC]

Apparently they've now been paid off - two days' wages as that's the time from when the administrator took over to them all getting laid off. They aren't expecting to see more at this point.

[Malakili]

Kind of sad really, this game could've been impressive, and parts of it did seem that way.  I just couldn't think of any reason to actually buy it.

[Mrbloodworth]

1.4.1 (57) Patch Notes


PTW Patch 1.4.1 First Hand

[AutomaticZen]

And more keep on coming.

“The last 6 months was chaos and no one seemed to know what they were doing. The amount of lies told, especially to EA, was unbelievable,” said the source.
The problems had mounted up against the developer, according to the source. “I think there was a realisation early on this year that the economic crash had finally hit the gaming world and this game that had taken 7+ years to develop and in excess of $100 million really wasn’t that different than the other games being released.”
“Coupled with a nasty double cross of EA - waiting until last minute to take back online publishing rights - right before launch and a confused marketing campaign meant no one other than hardcore gamers knew the game had launched,”
“Include some internal politics - mainly from the senior producers and art department - leading to stale advertising material and negative beta campaign the game never really had a chance.”
The source said that EA gave an ultimatum in regard to publishing APB “this summer or not at all” and that no other publisher had come in for the game. He added that “RTW was hemorrhaging $2 million a month between January to May in operation costs.”
“It is a shame as David Jones was still very passionate about his vision for the game but it was kind of stale and a bit 2006-07,” the source told NowGamer.
“There was a frantic push to de-bug and just get a working game out for summer and no one was asking if the game was actually worth playing let alone paying for.”

[Mrbloodworth]

Thats odd, I thought APB was using the EA Partners Program, meaning EA had nothing to do with development. Just distribution.

Anyway, tried the patch last night, and its like night and day, they should have launched like this (well, and more varied things to do as well).

[jakonovski]

The horrible part now is that they could miracle patch APB to be the best game ever made, and I still wouldn't dare buy it. Who knows when it keels over and the servers are shut down?

[LC]

Anyway, tried the patch last night, and its like night and day, they should have launched like this (well, and more varied things to do as well).

They were probably too busy coming up with more shit to drain your wallet.

[caladein]

From the hour or so I played this morning, it seems like a decent patch.

So, the new Not Ready state is what /missionsoff should have been all along.  I'm ecstatic.  No mission requests, no dispatches or calls for backup, and I can sit in a full district at Not 4 and never get an APB.  I don't know how it interacts with witnessing by an Enforcer or if it magically shields you in Not 5 but the latter is irrelevant since you need to kill players to get up to it anyway.

As for the driving, it's not so much "better" as "easier".  Cars definitely feel more responsive and seem to have loads more grip.  The drop from being in an empty district to a nearly full one is much less than before, but still noticeable.  Really, the only way to make a normal car misbehave now is to hump the handbrake at every opportunity.  Also, cars seem to take a bit more damage, but I haven't done any through testing.

"New clothing items", at least for females, is a few hats (Fedora, Beret, Cowboy Hat), yaaaaaaaaay.

[Mrbloodworth]

APB are now only triggered by witnessing. I did a few last night, trailed a criminal or two watched them commit crimes, then attempted arrest. Was rather fun. Cops and robbers action.

[WayAbvPar]

The horrible part now is that they could miracle patch APB to be the best game ever made, and I still wouldn't dare buy it. Who knows when it keels over and the servers are shut down?

Seriously. I might be tempted if I could get the 50 hours of game time for $10 or so, but no fucking way I would pay more than that at this point.

[Chinchilla]

I will be ingame once I get my new PC.  My laptop now runs it like crap even though before it was "semi-decent".  I'll probably try tonight again after patching up and see how it runs.  I'd like to at least finish off my last bit of hours before I decide on either keeping it or waiting.

[Ghambit]

Here's a bit of common sense for you guys:  APB doesnt NEED a studio-backed server farm.
We're talkin 100 people per server... cmon.  We've been runnin FPS dedi. since 2000 with that many users.
The reality is, all they did was add a sub fee to a glorified BF2/NWN server.  So, even if they go belly-up there's really no reason in hell they cant either lease out existing servers or give up the code to run your own.  All they'd really have to maintain is the lobby.

Tbh, my dream for this game was a larger strategic sandbox where each district and server were represented territorially on a larger interface (wherein we fight over them).  If RTW got out of the way, I guarantee you larger guilds would by up enough space to make this happen... and we'd have a better game than before.

Above all my blather though is the hard fact that they never intended APB to be a completed game, but a demo for a sellable platform.  Who's buyin now though?

[sam, an eggplant]

Here's a bit of common sense for you guys:  APB doesnt NEED a studio-backed server farm

Really? It must be massively distributed for that to be true. Can you elaborate a bit on the specifics of their architecture? You do have that knowledge, right? Otherwise you'd be talking out your ass.

[LK]

I wonder how much of that $100 mil went to SuicideGirls, whether legitimate or not.

[TripleDES]

Really? It must be massively distributed for that to be true. Can you elaborate a bit on the specifics of their architecture? You do have that knowledge, right? Otherwise you'd be talking out your ass.

The only thing RTW needs to supply is a repository to store item and character data. Any actual play servers could be hosted privately.

[sam, an eggplant]

How do you know that? Because it plays kinda like a shooter?

[Sheepherder]

EDIT: 2.5 rather than 3.  Also, I'm going to have to install UT2004 if I want to use UnrealED to look at scripts to see if there's anything differentiating pawns and player pawns.

[Threash]

It was actually 80 players.

[Kageru]

Also note, APB is still in development, and still online. I was personally extremely impressed with the tech created for the game,

Probably not for much longer...

Local newspaper The Courier have reported that games developer Realtime Worlds will shut down forever if they can’t find a buyer within six weeks capable of paying the company’s £3 million debt to UK trade creditors. This information, which comes from Paul Dounis, a senior figure at Begbies Traynor, the developer’s current administrator, also confirms that the official number of redundancies made at the Dundee office this week was 157 and not 170; 53 jobs have been kept in order to run All Points Bulletin.

Unfortunately, the redundant employees will not receive redundancy cash, nor will they be paid for completed work. Some have explained they will be applying to the government for compensation. According to several tweets, the company has also changed all staff computer passwords and employees are no longer able to reach their files or work.

Activision Blizzard and The Creative Assembly are just two of the companies which have set up recruitment fairs in the city to sign on some of Realtime’s best developers before they’re snapped up by the opposition; the former’s event was arranged just hours after the news of Realtime’s demise was broken to the public.

(quoted by a large number of gaming web pages... no idea which was first).

[Stormwaltz]

Someone seriously, seriously needs to snap up the customization suite.

[IainC]

EDIT: 2.5 rather than 3.  Also, I'm going to have to install UT2004 if I want to use UnrealED to look at scripts to see if there's anything differentiating pawns and player pawns.

I'm working as a designer on an UE3 project. I'm not an engineer but I do have to be cognizant of the limitations of the engine.

[Sheepherder]

Whatever this limitation is, I have a hard time imagining it as some massive technological hurdle.  Seeing as how the Vanguard dev team also overcame it.

There does appear to be more sanity checking in UT2004, just from throwing shit at the console to see what flies.

[Mrbloodworth]

Vanguard is an asynchronous game, for one.

[Sheepherder]

Which is kind of the point.  Obviously replacing Unreal Engine's networking capabilities with something that is more appropriate for your game is less difficult than you make it to be.

[sam, an eggplant]

Vanguard is an asynchronous game, for one.

All multiplayer games are asynchronous to varying degrees to compensate for unpredictable latency across the internet. This started way back with quakeworld when carmack effectively invented client-side prediction. Obviously shooters are more sensitive to warping and other side effects than dikuclones with autoattack, so they're simply less aggressive with the prediction, but they're all asynchronous.

Now if you're saying that APB is truly synchronous, I would be fairly surprised. If it were truly synchronous, you wouldn't be able to move immediately after pulling the network cable, and players with cruddy connections would experience "stuttery" movement. Players with superior connections would dominate competitively; 20ms players would be wolves to the 200ms sheep. I kinda doubt that's the case, but you never know.

[Tarami]

From the UE2 technical features:

Please note that we don’t provide a MMORPG server or networking framework suitable for massive multiplayer games. Though such a task is a multi man-year engineering effort, several teams using the Unreal Engine have done so (including NCSoft for Lineage II and Electronic Arts for Ultima X), demonstrating the feasibility of using the Unreal Engine as a MMORPG game client and tools pipeline, integrated with a proprietary server component.

Trivial.

[Mrbloodworth]

US firm acquires Project MyWorld

An anonymous American company has completed the purchase of Project Myworld from collapsed studio Realtime Worlds, Develop can reveal.

The move has permanently split Realtime Worlds into at least two segments – with numerous potential buyers eyeing up scattered portions of the company that are still deemed profitable.

[Sheepherder]

From the UE2 technical features:

Please note that we don’t provide a MMORPG server or networking framework suitable for massive multiplayer games. Though such a task is a multi man-year engineering effort, several teams using the Unreal Engine have done so (including NCSoft for Lineage II and Electronic Arts for Ultima X), demonstrating the feasibility of using the Unreal Engine as a MMORPG game client and tools pipeline, integrated with a proprietary server component.

Trivial.

It couldn't be that Epic is trying to pimp drop-in MMO client-server architectures like several of their partners produce.

[sam, an eggplant]

I doubt very much that EA is looking to promote a title they canceled 6 years ago.

[Sheepherder]

That's Epic, makers of Unreal Engine, not EA.

Their estimate of hours seems inflated, since every time Epic wants a new engine Tim Sweeny disappears alone into the wilderness for a year or two and comes back with the next version of Unreal.